


Tricks of the Trade

by queenmab_scherzo



Series: Symphony of a Thousand [5]
Category: The Hobbit RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Classical Music, Fluff, M/M, Nerdiness, SO MUCH FLUFF, orchestra jargon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-04 09:41:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3063062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenmab_scherzo/pseuds/queenmab_scherzo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean teaches Aidan how to make oboe reeds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tricks of the Trade

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Astaraiche](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astaraiche/gifts).



> disclaimer: i have no idea how to make oboe reeds.

"I'm thinking about taking up yoga," Aidan shouts, his head in a cupboard, his voice probably swallowed up by the stacks of mismatched tupperware and generous hoard of coffee grounds.

"Okay," Dean calls from the next room.

Aidan pulls his head out of the cabinet and ruffles his hair. "Don't you have any good coffee flavors in this place?"

"Yeah."

"Liar." Aidan shuffles through the coffee tins, all of which are labeled  _dark roast_  except for a lone case tucked into the corner— _medium roast_. "You're the shittiest coffee connoisseur ever."

"Cool."

And Aidan almost lets that slide, but in his mind he does this little double-take because usually Dean has at least one sassy response in him. Especially about his taste in coffee.

Frowning, Aidan leans around the cabinetry and bends over the bar that separates Dean's kitchen from his main room. The sight simultaneously frustrates, baffles, and amuses him.

Dean's sat at his work table between the windows and the TV, hunched over the weird landscape of machinery and stray bamboo shavings that make up his reed station. Which explains the lackluster one-word answers.

Stuffing his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants, Aidan ambles into the living room. "I thought you said you were done working on reeds today," he whines.

"Yeah, done shaping the last batch. Now I've got a whole new box of cane to split. If I finish a handful I can start soaking it first thing in the morning."

"Only part of that I understood was something about the morning," Aidan says. He loops his arms around Dean's neck to hug him from behind. Dean stiffens at first, but then his hand finds Aidan's wrist.

"Just give me a couple more minutes," he murmurs.

Nah, because now Aidan can hear the smile in Dean's voice that means the ice is gonna give way.

Aidan buries his nose in the nape of Dean's neck. "Mm, I can think of much better ways to spend the morning. Or, you know, the next half hour." He plants a row of light kisses along Dean's hairline and smiles when they elicit a shudder.

Or maybe that was Dean's chest shaking as he laughed. "I'm sure you can," he says, craning his neck to look at Aidan (which is not fair  _honestly_  because his dimples make Aidan weak, it's a known weakness, and it's a low blow, O'Gorman, using a superpower like that). "But I'm really going to finish work on this new batch of cane."

"Lame."

"After that I'm all yours." A chaste kiss. "I promise."

Really, no matter how bored Aidan is, he's still the geek who once spent an entire week's holiday memorizing the second horn part to  _Ein Heldenleben,_  so yeah, he gets it, he's not actually going to interrupt a guy trying to accomplish something productive, least of all the guy he— _Dean_ , of all people, who still lets Aidan spend the night whenever he wants for whatever reason. They don't even always have sex. In fact, one time Dean fell asleep on the couch first. On top of Aidan, in fact, who spent eleven awkward minutes trying to decide whether he ought to prod Dean awake or try to go to sleep, himself. In the end the shooting pain in his ribs convinced him to drag Dean to bed, but otherwise he'd have gladly KO-ed right there in the living room with his boyfriend.

Anyway.

"You're no fun," Aidan teases. And it  _is_  teasing, which he emphasizes by standing up straight again and giving Dean's shoulders a gentle rub.

"No, but I'm a decent oboe player."

Aidan snorts. Casts a glance over the materials Dean's got strewn across his workbench. A cardboard box on the corner of the table is overflowing with bamboo cane. "Jesus, how many reeds do you need?!"

"Enough to last a couple weeks, why?"

Aidan sputters and waves vaguely at the package. "Because you could make like, six million with that!"

"That's …" Dean frowns. "You know only about half of that stuff will be worth using, right?"

"No shit?" Aidan raises both eyebrows and slides onto the window seat, which provides a decent view of Dean's work, but from a safe distance. "How come they send you a bunch of shitty bamboo?"

"Well, it needs to be really precise and there's no time for mass producers to sift through all this to find the perfect pieces, you know?"

"Plus they want more of your money."

"Plus they want more of my money."

Aidan giggles and pulls one leg underneath him and gets comfortable. "So what bamboo is good bamboo?" he asks.

Then he pats himself on the back because Dean does that cute thing where he bites his lip and smiles at the same time. "It's, erm—well, there's a lot of little details that go into it. But first of all, it has to be a pretty golden color all the way through."

Aidan pokes at the pile of cane, sifting through the top of the box. Gingerly, because he's not sure how fragile the stuff is. Dean reaches in too and pulls out a medium-sized stalk. "This one's good," he says, rolling it over in his hands. Aidan looks for one that matches. When he picks one out Dean shrugs. "Yeah, that's not bad. Then you have to make sure it's level."

Budging the box of cane over so Aidan can see better, Dean lays his cane across the table's flat surface and bends down to see it at eye level. "Like that, see?"

Aidan starts a little, because he kind of forgot he was supposed to be paying attention to the bamboo and not the way Dean's eyelashes flutter when he looks down his nose. He bends closer, too, and notices how the cane rests completely flat on the table. No light peeking through.

Invigorated, he places his own piece of cane next to Dean's in order to test it.

Dean rolls it a little and frowns. "See, this one's not level, it has a big curve on this end."

Aidan's shoulders sag. "What?!" he whines. He's pretty offended, actually. "I thought that one looked good." Betrayed by a stick of bamboo.

Dean laughs. "I know, that's the problem! That's why I've got to sort through the whole box before I even start working on it."

Aidan lets out a low whistle. "So is there a fun part to this, or…?"

"Aha, well, 'fun' might be a stretch."

"I think I'd rather play long tones."

"Shut up," Dean says with a grin. Then he reaches out and pulls a glass over from the other side of the table. "Here, these are the ones I just finished shaping."

"Shaping?"

"Yeah, you fit the cane into the shaper and then shave it down with a razor."

"Oh! I want to—"

"No," Dean says flatly.

Which is unfair. "Using all these fancy knives is like, the only good part!"

"You're not touching my knives."

 _So_  unfair.

"But listen," Dean smirks, "these are already shaped, so you can help me tie them off."

"I feel like you're making terminology up as you go just to fuck with me."

Dean throws his head back with laughter, for real, and it's kind of startling because yeah, Aidan was joking, but it makes his chest flutter knowing he can make Dean laugh like that. Dean, of all people. He has a really cute laugh. And he doesn't do it that much.

"You could probably confuse me with French horn stuff just as easily," Dean allows.

Aidan considers it. "One day maybe I'll give you a lesson on transposition."

"That'd do it." Dean turns his attention to the little cup of half-made reeds. They look like a bunch of fat wooden tweezers. "So, these are the ones that need to be tied to staples."

Aidan nods, even though he still feels like Dean's picking words randomly out of the dictionary.

"Give me your foot," Dean says, kind of confirming Aidan's theory.

"I'm—what?"

"Oh wait, we'll use mine, you haven't got any shoes on." Dean crosses one ankle over the other knee so Aidan can reach the sole of his shoe. "Now pick out a color string."

Nothing is exactly making sense yet, but Aidan can follow simple directions. At the back of the table stands a row of little fat spools of thread. His hand hovers for a moment before he pulls out the pink.

"Gay," Dean says drily.

"Yes, and you're the one who's gonna use it."

"…There's so many things I want to say right now."

Aidan wags his eyebrows, but Dean is instantly all business. It's another one of his superpowers. Dimples and the ability to prioritize in order of most- to least-boring.

"Okay, so I'll wrap the string around my shoe for you. Hold this," he hands Aidan the spool, "and hold this." He hands him the loose end of thread. Aidan waits, string in each hand, feeling pretty dumb, but also inexplicably giddy. "Tie that off, would you?"

"Like, round your foot?"

"Mhm."

Aidan does so. It's very weird.

Dean continues, "Then I'm gonna pull out one of these reeds and attach it to the center of the staple."

"Oh—the cork thing! The part you put in the oboe."

Dean nods.

"Why the fuck do you call it a staple?" Aidan wonders. It's a little cork cylinder that looks pretty far from the mainstream definition of "staple."

Dean shrugs. He doesn't seem bothered by his profession's lack of all sense. Probably used to it. His attention is already on the reed in his hand (seriously—superpower), which he fits carefully onto one end of the little cylinder that is apparently a "staple." Then he reaches for a ruler. "You have to measure it so it's exactly 73 millimeters."

"That's …  _really_  specific."

Dean winks. Which makes Aidan giggle. Pretty much everything Dean does makes him giggle. Which is like—honestly, how many superpowers can Dean have?

"Okay, this is good," he says, holding the reed out for Aidan. "Got the string tied tight?"

Aidan nods. Holds up both hands. In one, he has the 73-millimeter reed; in the other, the little spool of thread.

"Now," Dean leans in close so their noses are about an inch apart. Aidan completely loses focus because shit, Dean must be using a new shampoo. Or body wash. Or detergent. Aidan can't tell exactly because—you know—lost focus. Dean kind of loosely takes Aidan's hands, and Aidan automatically smiles. "Here, I'll take the reed. And right here," Dean says, indicating a spot on the reed with his thumbnail, "start wrapping the string around."

Snapping himself out of his stupor, Aidan draws from his small reserve of focus and starts to wind the thread around the bamboo.

"Are you getting it tight enough?" Dean asks.

"I think so." Aidan starts to pull tighter.

It doesn't take very long. The world shrinks down to a few square inches of bamboo and fingertips and bit lips and—Aidan's hair is falling in his face and kind of getting in the way, but other than that it's perfect. The only sounds are Dean's little murmurs of encouragement, and when he tells Aidan when to stop, go back the other way, and so on. Then he smiles. "That's it! Here, now I'll take it and tie the knots."

Aidan hands over his masterpiece (because it is, of course, it must be) and rests his elbows on his knees to watch Dean fasten the string. Two little wrinkles form on the bridge of Dean's nose while he works, and he holds the reed really close to his face so his eyes almost cross. It makes Aidan grin and bite down on his tongue.

Dean's eyes flick up and the birds take flight in Aidan's belly.

"All done!"

Aidan refocuses his attention to the reed. "Looks good." Then he double-takes. Actually pays attention to the reed, and not Dean's dimples. "Oh my god," Aidan gasps, seeing what's actually happening. "You mean—a double reed isn't actually two reeds! It's just one reed folded in  _half!"_

Dean laughs again, scrunching up his nose the way Aidan likes. "Who ever said it was two reeds?"

"… I don't know, I just—my mind is blown."

Dean snorts. "Happy I could help."

For a minute, Aidan just stares at Dean. He doesn't really know what to say because oboe and music and eyelashes and mundane epiphanies. And butterflies in his stomach.

Predictably, Dean's attention is on his reed. "It's not bad. I think I'm gonna keep it."

Aidan grins so hard it hurts. "I think I'm gonna keep you." Then he surges forward, takes Dean's face between his hands, and plants an uncoordinated kiss on Dean's lips.

Laughing, Dean leans back. "Ugh, what is all over your face?!"

"Vaseline."

"…What?!"

"It's like chapstick-times-twenty."

Dean wipes at his face and tries not to laugh. " _Gross_."

"Hey, you take care of your bamboo, I take care of my lips."

**Author's Note:**

> and that, my friends, is probably one of most weirdly specific oneshots on this website.


End file.
